CHAPTER 56

Not everything about life in the Grasslands was bad. There were some bright spots. And, for Ed, one of those bright spots was Sandra Tellez.

They’d met a few days before, while she was helping out in the med clinic. Ed had spent that entire morning on top of the east fence, repairing the damage from the last time the infected had broken through. Overnight, the wind had piled snowdrifts along the base of the fence, and from his perch he could look north and east across a vast, pillowed range of white where the earthmovers pushed the zombies that had been shot that morning into burn piles. But the fires hadn’t started yet and the air still smelled clean. The sky was a huddled gray mass sitting low on the plains, like fog, giving the surrounding countryside a sheltering look. It was intensely cold up there on the fence, so cold that not only did his hands refuse to work but so did his mind. He found himself drifting, thinking about people he had known and lost, and before he knew it, his jeans had frozen to the wooden rail on which he was sitting.

Two men had to peel him from the fence. He couldn’t bend his legs, so they had to carry him to the clinic. It was a simple wooden cabin with a portable sink in one corner and a foam-top table they’d salvaged from a real medical clinic over in New Salem. Ed was facedown on the table.

Sandra Tellez had come in like a breath of fresh air. He’d seen her around the compound and thought she was pretty. He’d always had a thing for Latinas. He liked the way they could hold on to their youthful appearance well into their forties and fifties.

“Well, this ought to be interesting,” she said. “How you feeling?”

“You asking me if this hurts?”

“Does it?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I froze it to a fence post.”

She blinked. And then she started to laugh.

“It’s not funny,” he said.

“Mr. Moore, you nearly froze your ass off. And I mean that literally. You gotta admit, that’s funny.”

She laughed again, and this time he couldn’t help but smile. “I like what it does to your face when you laugh,” he said.

The smile wavered on her face, but didn’t go away. “Are you hitting on me, Mr. Moore?”

“Just making conversation,” he said. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

Her smile became a smirk. “The way I see it, you got two choices.”

“Oh? What are they?”

“You can either lay there and wait for your pants to unfreeze or you can let me pour some hot water over your butt.”

“How long do you think it’ll take my pants to melt?”

“Don’t know. An hour maybe.”

He shrugged. “Might not be so bad, with a little company.”

“You’re a sly old devil, Mr. Moore. You are hitting on me.”

“Call me Ed,” he said.

Later that afternoon, she joined him for lunch. She told him about living inside the quarantine walls in Houston, and it was the first time he’d heard anybody talk with any authority on the way the infected changed over time.

“They’re excellent scavengers,” she said. “That’s one of the biggest changes. The new ones, the ones they call Stage One zombies, those exist by killing and eating whatever they can catch. That’s why so many of them die off. They either can’t catch enough to live on or they die from eating whatever they catch.”

They were sharing roasted turkey legs and spaghetti squash and mashed potatoes with a weak brown gravy. Ed watched Sandra cut off a pat of butter from the serving dish on the table between them and mix it into her squash.

“What about the other kinds of zombies, the later-stage ones?”

“The Stage Three zombies, they’re scary good at finding food. Whenever we’d see them, we’d tail along, waiting to see what they’d find. More often than not, they’d lead us to something good. The trick was to take them out before they had a chance to taint whatever they found. I remember this one time they led us to somebody’s stockpile of canned goods and fresh water. We ate good for about a week on that.”

“Would they have been able to open the cans?” Ed asked.

“I don’t know, maybe. The Stage Three zombies can do some pretty weird stuff. I’ve heard stories about them answering to their names, stuff like that. They can open doors and climb ladders and even play dead.”

Ed shook his head. “That’s amazing that you survived all that time.”

“Survival was never a question with me. I never once doubted that I was going to live. When I saw my daughter die, I think that was it for me. That was the moment I knew I was going to live. That sounds weird, right? I mean, you always hear people say that if their child died, they wouldn’t be able to live another second. I used to think that, too. But then, when it happened”—she shrugged—“I don’t know. It was strange. I just couldn’t let her memory go. Does that make sense? It’s like I could keep her alive, at least some part of her, by remembering her. I couldn’t give up. Does that make sense?”

“What was her name?”

“Maria. People used to say she looked just like me, but when I looked at her, all I could see were her father’s eyes.”

“I bet she was beautiful.”

“She was.” Sandra smiled at him. “But then, after that, Clint came back into my life, and it became that much more important to live. It was tough going, but we made it, living hand to mouth, until that day we saw Officer Barnes’s helicopter crash.”

“And he brought you guys here.”

“That’s right.”

Ed chewed on his bottom lip, thinking. He said, “I don’t know if I’ve got Michael Barnes figured out yet. He seems, I don’t know, dangerous somehow.”

Her eyes shifted left, then right, like she was checking to see who was within listening range. “Ed,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “He’s more dangerous than you know. He’s not sane.”

“He seems to have Jasper’s ear.”

“I know.” She pushed her plate away and looked at him. “Ed, tell me the truth. Is this a good place? Are we safe here?”

That night they caught a movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, one of Ed’s favorites. Afterward, he walked Sandra back to the cabin she shared with Clint. It was a cold, cloudless night, and most of the village had already turned in, even though curfew was still a good twenty minutes off.

They stopped at the door to her cabin and she turned to face him. “I had fun today,” she said.

“Me, too.” He was about to ask her if she’d like to join him for breakfast in the morning when he heard the sound of a truck shifting gears. Sandra’s cabin faced the compound’s southern fence and Ed turned toward the road in the distance. He saw a pair of trucks moving along the road that led around to the west entrance of the compound. They were struggling with the thick snow on the road, the headlights bobbing in the air like fireflies.

She said, “Ed, what’s that?”

“They’re pulling trailers,” he said.

They watched the trucks swing around to the west entrance, near Jasper’s quarters. Several men ran out from the sheds behind Jasper’s quarters and opened the gates.

“What are they doing?” Sandra asked.

The men who rushed out to open the gates were unloading barrels from the trailers now, stacking them into piles down near the fence. Ed recognized a few faces in the glare of the headlights, most of them members of the security patrols.

“Ed, look there.”

“Where?”

“By the truck. That’s Michael Barnes.”

Ed studied the figures. His eyesight wasn’t what it once was, but it was still good enough to make out Michael Barnes talking with Jasper.

And Jasper looked as pleased as punch.